Milk is a part of the school meal program, but it’s not always the first choice for children at the lunch table. So, Midwest Dairy is looking for ways to integrate dairy into other parts of the meal. Julie Mattson Ostrow, Midwest Dairy’s Vice President of Dairy Experience and Wellness, says they’re having success with programs to get kids to consume dairy.
“One of them is a breakfast program, having something at mid-morning really helps to fuel their brain. One of the really exciting dairy foods schools are really turning towards are smoothies, made with milk, and made with yogurt,” Mattson Ostrow said. Another success the team has had in schools is simply warming up chocolate milk for students.
She explained that one of the goals is to get students to choose dairy in and outside of the school. “They are 100 percent of our future consumers. So, the things that we can do to show them how delicious dairy is, and in various ways, will carry over into that next part of their life,” Mattson Ostrow said.
One of the school districts Midwest Dairy works with is in Wichita, Kansas where they put a couple of different programs in place. “They not only implemented what’s called a second chance breakfast, so again, students who come to school and maybe didn’t get enough to eat, but they have a second chance to have breakfast at school. And we also added a smoothie program which resulted in over 200,000 added pounds of milk above what they were usually serving,” she said.
Another way to incorporate dairy into the diets of children is to highlight the comfort foods that contain dairy. “There’s so much comfort food in dairy, things like ice cream, mac and cheese, pizza, lots of really delicious kinds of foods that everybody needs to help them not only stay healthy, but they can also provide that kind of relaxation and calming, which I think is something we all desperately need over the last couple of years,” Mattson Ostrow explained.
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